Martin Shkreli, aka Pharmabro, launched a new company last year called Druglike, Inc.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now holding him in contempt for failing to cooperate with the Commission’s investigation into whether the company’s launch violated his life embargo. I am asking the judge.
Earlier last year, Judge Dennis Court imposed a life embargo on Shkreli barring him from participating in the pharmaceutical industry.
Cote ruled that a former pharmaceutical executive orchestrated an illegal anti-competitive scheme to gain exclusive rights to the life-saving antimalarial and antiparasitic drug Dalaprim.
After obtaining a manufacturing license for Dalaprim from Turing, the predecessor of Shkreli, it increased the price from $17.50 to $750 per tablet.
Court sided with the FTC in an antitrust lawsuit it filed against Shkreli in 2020, ordering it to pay $64.6 million in damages and imposing a lifetime ban from the industry.
Ahead of Druglike’s launch, Shkreli tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade a judge to suspend the ban, arguing that his future contributions to the industry would benefit the public.
Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in 2017 for deceiving investors and challenged the ban while serving a federal prison sentence. He was released in May.
Starting in October 2022, the FTC began asking Shkreli to review compliance reports and related records, as well as to respond to drag-like interviews.
But the company’s co-founders continued to ignore the “repeated requests.” The agency also said Shkreli had yet to pay any of the $64.6 million fine. The court is now asking Shkreli to respond to requests for information within 21 days of the decision.
Druglike describes itself as the “Web3 drug discovery software platform” in its launch press release (PDF).
The company says it will build a “distributed computer network” to “provide resources for anyone who wants to launch or contribute to an early-stage drug discovery project.”
“Druglike will remove barriers to early-stage drug discovery, boost innovation and allow a wider range of contributors to share rewards,” Shkreli said in his statement.
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